Tuesday, January 29, 2008

- for them to finally drop the bomb.

A truth and beauty bomb. They’re quite distinctive. No other bomb explodes like a bag of flour, sending great clouds of pink, blue and yellow gas billowing out through the grid that is Melbourne’s streets. It smells like bubblegum and regret.

Some people run. They drop their briefcases and mobile phones and run screaming from the fairy floss cloud come to swallow them. I stand to one side, and watch as the world around me is hidden by a rainbow.

It’s already too late.

A stranger emerges from the cloud, one of the emo kids from the steps of Flinders Street Station. He stares at me, wide eyed and wide mouthed in horror. Unable to stop himself, he points and shouts that my breasts are enormous.

I point back and yell that he’s too fat for skinny leg jeans, and wince when I do. The truth will out, and it isn’t always beautiful. He bursts into tears and disappears in a waft of pink.

Time, then, to do what must be done, and quickly. The containment plan, set in down legislation more than a year ago when the first truth and beauty bomb hit and incapacitated Auckland in New Zealand, would have wound up before this bomb even hit. Somewhere, the RAAF is scrambling all the combat jets it has. It has been proven, time and again, that civilisation cannot function with truth and beauty. Nations have collapsed under their weight. Australia has no desire to suffer the same fate.

I duck into an internet café. The attendant, hidden behind a gas mask, charges me significantly more than normal. The truth is, he’s a money-grubbing opportunistic jerk, and with the gas thick in my lungs, I have no choice but to tell him so. He shrugs, amused, and after taking my money begins his escape from the city.

It starts as a letter to my family, a last good bye before they cut the power and concrete the lockdown, but the truth will out, and out, and out, and it grows to be a letter to everyone, then a blog post, then a forum post, on every forum, in every journal, anywhere I can say-

They dropped the bomb. The world is changing. My eyes are changing the world. I’m already dead, I just haven’t stopped moving. The truth is,you drive me fucking crazyyou made me cry when you didn’t callyou made me cry when you wouldn’t look awayyou made me shy with your considerationyou’re awesomeyou’re awfuli miss you even when you’re herei want to get to know you better so i can miss you better so i can abuse you and lose youi would have stayed up all nightyou were too cool stylish amazing for mei wish i'd just kissed youyou’ve never listened to a word i saidi didn’t say i like you can we hang and i should haveyou take yourself too seriouslyi triedyou should have said sorryyou’re boringi should have asked you whyyou’re not the friend i wanted you to bei liedyou disappoint mei made a mistake no several mistakes with you and i’m sorryyou’re my favourite personyou did me so much damage and you didn’t even noticeyou should know better than to aski admire you and your clarity and your strengthyou stopped being gay for her why not meyou crushed my dreamsyou make me a better personi don’t know how to be happyi can make you happyyou’re adorable and fuzzyyou make me feel worthlessi was rightyou need to shut up and learn about silenceyour normality puts me off kilteri was afraid you’d say no so i didn’t askyou need to stop coming on with an agendayou hurt me every dayi did that on purposei don’t know how to say thank you for letting me stay in your lifethe delight you take in the world makes the world delightfulyou’re a pathetic whorei want to hold your hand on a winter’s nightyou need to lighten upyou should be nicer to meyou should just go ahead and do it trodden toes be damnedyou think too highly of yourselfyou’d be a kinder person if you could read mindsi was never as important to you as you were to mei deserve nothing any of you have ever done for meyou make me what i amyou don’t know mei don’t know you,nothing changes.

The truth is-

Press send. Press send. Press send. The power disappears. It is beginning.

I go home.

I open the window, and stand with my arms hanging out, and watch the pigeons flutter across the narrow alley from my sill to the opposite. Sunlight reflects on the birdshit and dust streaked glass. Little feathers, city grime, the sound of hundreds of people crying as they have no choice but to be truthful with themselves, maybe for the first time, certainly for the last time. The pigeons bob their heads madly, and chase each other along narrow filthy ledges. Here is the fast growing roar of jets thundering low overhead. There is the concussion of bombs, real deadly damaging destructive bombs tearing the city apart, wiping Melbourne and everyone drowning in the truth and beauty of the world off the map.